FRANKENSTEIN , DRACULA AND THE UNCANNY by Mark Mayes The novels Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818) and Dracula (Bram Stoker, 1897) have been much adapted since they were written, as countless films, plays, literary reworkings, and even as cartoons. Their central protagonists – the Creature and the Count – have been used in advertising to sell anything from Heineken to Apple computers. The result of all this can be a distancing from and distortion of their original characters, so much so that, for example, the name of Frankenstein, the hubristic doctor and creator of the ‘Creature’, is used to denote the Creature himself. The creator and created have become synonymous, further blurring the Creature’s individual essence – effacing him. I wanted to take a look at the original texts from which these many spin-offs emanate and show how they demonstrate a crisis of faith and an anxiety about the loss of absolute truths, with particular regard to manifestations of the uncanny.